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by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.
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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

Critical Thinking: Tips for Getting Better At It (Encore)

Wednesday February 13, 2002

Carl Sagan's masterwork, The Demon-Haunted World, contained a great many suggestions for those of us committed to a healthy and satisfying lifestyle. The usefulness of such skills extend well beyond avoiding Y2K-inspired lunacy as described in my essays during the last two days. They apply daily, in everyday transactions.

One of the first principles of critical thinking is this: To construct and understand a reasoned argument or defend against unreasoned, irrational arguments, insist that the conclusion logically follows the premise. To help you make that judgment in varied cases, follow these guides or tips:

Eliminate tactics that blur and distort the issues, such as ad hominem arguments, appeals to ignorance, special pleadings, begging the question, observational selection, suppressed evidence, statistics of small numbers, and confusion of correlation with causation.

Needless to note but I will anyway, these latter characteristics are commonplace in political debates.

More critical thinking tips will be offered tomorrow. Comments are welcomed, as always. Best wishes.

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